Arturo Luz, National Artist for Visual Arts, 94

MANILA, Philippines — Arturo Luz painter, sculptor, designer, photographer and last of the great Modernists died on Wednesday night. He was 94 years old.

Arturo’s daughter, Angela Luz, announced his passing on social media:

“(My father) peacefully joined his Creator at 8:45 this evening, and I stood by his side as he took his last breath. We could not have asked for anything more. God blessed my father with 94 of the most wonderful years on earth. He enriched our lives with his art, with his incredible talent and his genius. He will be terribly missed, but will never be forgotten. His legacy will live on, and will last forever.”

And what a legacy it is.

The artist is known for his geometric, linear, minimalist art, often distilling his subjects to their quintessence: street musicians, vendors, acrobats, cyclists,
 carousels, imaginary landscapes and cities of the past. Lines, blocks of red or black or silver, a throb of space — all coalescing toward a quietly startling beauty.

Arturo Luz was born in Manila on Nov. 29, 1926. He began his lessons in painting under Pablo Amorsolo, brother of National Artist Fernando Amorsolo. The late Sid Gomez Hildawa wrote for The STAR: “By his own recollection, the decision to become an artist occurred to Arturo when, seated at the family dining table after lunch one sleepy afternoon, he drew a profile of his mother and was pleased with the result. He was 17 then and Manila was occupied by Japanese forces.”

The young Arturo attended the University of Santo Tomas (UST) School of Fine Arts, and among his teachers were Diosdado Lorenzo and Galo Ocampo. Luz then received a scholarship at the California College of Arts and Craft in Oakland for a three-year diploma in art program. He continued his education at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York in 1950, and at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in 1951.

It was in Paris that he had his first one-man exhibit of drawings at the Galerie Raymond Duncan in 1951. He held his second solo exhibition at the Manila Hotel upon his return to the Philippines in the same year. It was Luz’s introduction to the local art scene, in which he would later on become an influential, inspiring force. His early works were figurative, having been influenced by Neo-Realists, but — beginning in 1969 — his art took on a different, more refined arc.

Line, composition relationships

The artist explained in an interview, “Why do I insist on using a subject when my work is progressively becoming more and more linear, more and more abstract? The subject simply no longer seems important. The important elements are line, composition relationships.”

It was this artistic strategy that he would fine-tune through the years, creating an oeuvre of paintings, prints, sculptures, collages and photographs that communicate an eloquence in austerity and simplicity. A body of work with strong Zen and architectural influences.

Hildawa wrote: “Luz’s adherence to formalism combined with minimalist elegance and restraint has enabled him to arrive at his own signature style, distinct from those of acknowledged influences like Paul Klee, Frank Stella, Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore and Anthony Caro, among many others. This artistic style has likewise evolved side-by-side with changing preoccupations — artistic and otherwise.”

Luz also founded a gallery in 1960. For more than 40 years, the Luz Gallery would mount exhibitions, most of them centered on non-figurative art. From the 1970s to the 1980s, Arturo Luz was head of three premier art institutions: Design Center Philippines, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and the Museum of Philippine Art. He resigned from these government positions in the mid-1980s and began life as a full-time artist. In 1997, he was conferred the Order of National Artist for Visual Arts.

Longtime friend Sari Ortiga of Crucible Gallery says he was fortunate enough to have heard Luz share his artistic philosophy and reveal how that great mind worked. “Arturo was the last of the Moderns, and his art blends effortlessly in the contemporary art scene. He was ahead of his time. He was a visionary.” Art critic Cid Reyes points out how Luz was the exemplar of classic elegance and precision in Philippine painting.

Reyes explains, “Luz singlehandedly streamlined Philippine modern art, and swept away all the visual excrescences and emotionalism that our native sensibility is heir to. Long before minimalism became a trendy buzzword, Luz had already pared down form to its essence and tempered color to its least resonant hue. His composition was never less than perfect, accurate to the last millimeter.”

Bob Dylan once sang about finding infinity in “every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.” Arturo Luz once said that transformation informs his art. He painted what is essential and weeded out the superfluous, with every stroke, every line becoming a thread to an elegantly unfolding universe.